Casting an authoritative eye over the nine forgotten realms of Dark Ages Britain, the author of Viking Britain paints a vivid portrait of the medieval world and examines how different the future map of Britain could have looked.
From the bestselling author of Viking Britain, a new epic history of our forgotten past.
As Tolkien knew, Britain in the 'Dark Ages' was an untidy mosaic of kingdoms. Some - like Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria and Gwynedd - have come to dominate understandings of the centuries that followed the collapse of Roman rule. Others, however, have been left to languish in a half-light forgotten kingdoms who followed unique trajectories before they flamed out or faded away. But they too have stories to be told: of saints and gods and miracles, of giants and battles and the ruin of cities.
This is a book about those lands and peoples who fell by the wayside: the lost realms of early medieval Britain. In Lost Realms, Thomas Williams focuses on nine kingdoms representing every corner of the island of Britain. From the Scottish Highlands to the Cornish coastline, from the Welsh borders to the Thames Estuary, this book uncovers the forgotten life and untimely demise of realms that hover in the twilight between history and fable.
Elmet. Hwicce. Lindsey. Dumnonia. Essex. Rheged. Powys. Sussex. Fortriu. The grave-fields and barrow-mounds of these shadowed lands give up the bodies of farmers, warlords and queens, a scattering of their names preserved on weathered stone and brittle parchment. Their halls remain as ghost-marks in the earth, their hill-forts clinging to rocky outcrops. This is the world of Arthur and Urien, of Picts and Britons and Saxon migrations, of magic and war, myth and miracle.
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780008171964
Number of pages: 432
Weight: 510 g
Dimensions: 240 x 159 x 39 mm
PRAISE FOR LOST REALMS ‘Sceptical, scrupulous, written with wit and flair’Financial Times ‘This brilliant history of Dark Age Britain mixes serious scholarship with nods to pop culture, from Tolkien to The Wicker Man… Lost Realms is a joy to read’The Telegraph, FIVE STAR REVIEW ‘Williams makes a compelling guide as he steers us through the darkness’ Spectator ‘Williams has a fine command of the literary, administrative, religious and archaeological sources of early medieval Britain. He is a diligent scholar and a likeable writer’ Sunday Times ‘Rich and captivating’ TLS ‘The book is beautifully written, pushing at the very limits of our ability to understand the early medieval world’ British Archaeology ‘In recovering what he can of the near-vanished histories of Britain’s lost realms, Williams has done an admirable job, evoking the spirit of an age that was both chaotic and creative, from the ferment of which England and ultimately Britain emerged. It is a gift indeed to be reminded that Dumnonia, Lindsey, Fortriu, Hwicce, Elmet and Rheged – faint ghosts of places though they may now seem – made their own contributions to what we are today’ Literary Review 'Thomas Williams has blended a potent brew of mythic and material fragments to raise forgotten kings & queens (and their stories) from the grave. An historian not afraid of the dark and with eyes adapted to it – what he sees is assessed sagely and described beautifully'Christopher Hadley, author of Hollow Places
This is an example of how to write a book from very little evidence. The number of sources of information on the post-Roman state of Britain can be numbered on one hand and, as the author says, many of them cannot be... More
It's rare to find a book that mixes serious history with accurate pop culture references but Williams has managed it here. This account of the patchwork of little, and frequently forgotten, kingdoms of old... More
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It deals with the ephemeral - the kingdoms that existed in but did not survive our early medieval period and because of the lack of formal record, their stories risk being ‘lost’. It... More
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